Antes de deixar o livro esfriar, e, dar o tempo de lê-lo fechado, na mente, enumerarei minhas primeiras impressões ainda frescas, de bate pronto: é um pequeno grande livro, míseras cem páginas, mas dotadas de estilo, e, com diversos tempos como tema, lembranças, deja-vu, falha de memória, sonho; tudo baseado em histórias reais contadas a ele por amigos — no final há dedicatória e tudo. Os contos, são bastante estilísticos, e não há aquela disparidade gritante tão incômoda (tanto de tamanho quanto de qualidade) em livros de contos. O maior deles é justamente o melhor: "Núvens"; e o último é memorável pelo narrador lhe dar uma volta caso você tente encurralá-lo, qualquer tentativa de acompanhá-lo é frustrada (no bom sentido); e, pelo que entendi, implica em um looping de personagem-narrador alheio ao seu papel. ( )

The characters in these nine pieces (late 20th c. Europeans) wander along the boundary between interiority and history, and Tabucchi lets the reader share in the formulation of meaning.

The path continued down toward a clinic in the middle of the grounds. They'd stopped talking, but he could hear the noise of the wheelchair rolling over the gravel. He wanted to turn around but was unable to. The most beautiful thing in the world. That's what the girl has said, this bald girl, being hauled in a wheelchair by a nurse. She knew what the most beautiful thing in the world was. He, however, did not. How was it possible at his age, with all he'd seen and experienced, that he still didn't know what the most beautiful thing in the world was?

Tutti i personaggi di questo libro sembrano impegnati a confrontarsi col tempo: il tempo delle vicende che hanno vissuto o stanno vivendo e quello della memoria o della coscienza. Ma è come se nelle loro clessidre si fosse alzata una tempesta di sabbia: il tempo fugge e si ferma, gira su se stesso, si nasconde, riappare a chiedere i conti. Dal passato emergono fantasmi beffardi, le cose prima nettamente distinte ora si assomigliano, le certezze implodono, le versioni ufficiali e i destini individuali non coincidono.

abucchi’s notion of time (e.g., aging) is a weird one. I grew up thinking it didn't really exist, that it was just something us humans invented as a measurement, like cm or mm. But I also used to think tomato soup was lava. Time is the only God, because it behaves in exactly the way any self-respecting God should: it continues to do its thing utterly dependably, and ignores everything else. The problem, I think, is that our scientific knowledge of time is so limited that in any discussion, we can't avoid drifting into metaphysics, which doesn't really add to the discussion. Regarding "time" as an entity, I feel we are like a caveman looking at the Mona Lisa and wondering how it was done what it could mean. We simply don't understand the extent of what we're looking at, and, like every generation, fall into the familiar trap that, because we are the here-and-now, we are the cleverest there's ever been, so we KNOW the answer, when, in fact, we're not much smarter than all the thousands of generations before us. The generations who follow us will behave in exactly the same way.

They don’t understand. When you are young, you don't really believe it will happen to you. 'The old' are a different species. By the time you get it, you are old yourself. Age sneaks up on us. I look in the mirror and ask 'Who are you and what did you do with my body'? Old age is just are the last pages of a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying only the rare pearls you found in an ocean of manure, and letting the glowing memory of those rare pearls play you out into oblivion. Hand me my single malt, please. The upside of being dead? Much of the bad, maybe even the worst, is behind you. You feel no pain, or even mild frustration, when you are dead. That's good!

I used to think I was old when I was 30. Getting old is not something that worries me rather than the inability to do certain things that comes with age. There are many things we do not understand. But I have come to understand two very important things due to personal experience. The first one is that we are not alone, and that there are beings who treat us in a similar way that conservationists treat wild animals by tagging and observing them. I have come to accept this, and I do not need have a need for anyone to accept this, I accept it myself, and that is good enough for me! The point is: Am I getting on in years? We all are! But I can still pedal the living arse off any of the teenagers or 20 somethings around here. I'm still reading about string theory, loop quantum gravity and topology. As Petruchio puts it in “The Taming of the Shrew”: “Where is the life that late I led?” I had this sentence come at me about 10 times in my life, but it's true (I know it’s all in Shakespeare you dumb ass!). The real meaning of this sentence dawned on me a long time ago, but the sentence only neon-ed up two years ago when I re-read all of my Shakespeare.

I don't doubt that someone, finally, will unravel the mystery of "time", but I don't realistically expect it for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Meanwhile I’m still on this wonderful journey of reading all of Tabucchi’s body of work. Aging, Time? Bah! Read Tabucchi! It’s all there. ( )

This collection of nine short stories written toward the end of the author's career all concern the passage of time, and how the different characters in them confront significant life challenges and overcome them. I only liked one of the stories, "Clouds", in which a young girl and a former military man both on holiday have a conversation about his past while sitting on a beach. I found the other stories to be unfocused, uninteresting and lacking in insight. ( )